Why 2019 will be the biggest movie year EVER

When Disney confirmed its release schedule up until 2023, we’re not sure they realised they’d be turning next year’s box office into a major headline.

But just one glimpse at what they’ve got coming up tells a fairly massive story.

March 8, 2019: Captain Marvel
March 29, 2019: Tim Burton’s Dumbo
April 19, 2019: Disneynature’s Penguins
May 3, 2019: Avengers 4
May 24, 2019: Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin
June 21, 2019: Toy Story 4
July 19, 2019: Jon Favreau’s The Lion King
August 9, 2019: Kenneth Branagh’s Artemis Fowl
October 4, 2019: Untitled Disney Live Action
November 8, 2019: Untitled Disney Fairy Tale
November 27, 2019: Frozen 2
December 20, 2019: J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode 9

So, that’s two Marvel movies (huge ones), three live action adaptations of three of the most popular Disney animations, the next Toy Story movie (Toy Story 3 was the third highest grossing animated movie ever made), the next Star Wars movie (which also happens to be the conclusion to the reboot trilogy) and the sequel to the actual highest grossing animated movie of all time – Frozen.

Basically, we’d be looking at the biggest box office year if this was all we were being offered, but this is just ONE STUDIO.

Scan what everyone else has coming up, and a record-breaking year is all but guaranteed.

Universal has How to Train Your Dragon 3, Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw, Robert Downey Jr’s The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle and Ryan Reynolds in Detective Pikachu.

20th Century Fox has some interesting stuff on its slate, but in terms of blockbuster hopes, it’s betting everything on The New Mutants (no wonder Fox moved the release date from this year to 2019).

Paramount’s pinning its hopes on Top Gun: Maverick, Terminator 6 and Dora the Explorer, all of which will add cash to the end of year total.

Sony has a huge year ahead, with the 25th James Bond film, Spider-Man: Homecoming 2, the franchise-launching Masters of the Universe, a Charlie’s Angels reboot, the Men in Black spinoff that’s currently courting Chris Hemsworth, and Tarantino’s new one Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (QT’s past few have proven he’s a box office draw whatever the subject matter).

Warner Brothers has the sequel to its huge horror hit It: Chapter Two, the sequel to the box office sensation Wonder Woman 2, The Lego Movie Sequel, monster mash-up Godzilla: King of the Monsters (which will see ‘Zilla facing off against some of his biggest enemies), DCEU instalment Shazam!, the first Minecraft movie and a Shaft reboot.

There’s never been a year like this (2015 came close) – and not everything can be a record breaker, so expect some surprising box office disappointments to be in the mix (and maybe even some release-date shifts).

But, even if half of the above movies don’t achieve what they should expect, we’ll still see overall records shatter.

It’s time to start saving, folks – you’re going to be buying a LOT of cinema tickets in 2019.


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